The Driving Instructor
by Bottlebrush
Summary: Remus Lupin sometimes had to work at Muggle jobs to earn some cash. This is one of them.


Title: The Driving Instructor

Rating: K

Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter world or its characters. J. K. Rowling does.

Remus Lupin sometimes had to work at Muggle jobs just to earn some cash. This story is about one of them.

Remus Lupin got into the front passenger seat of the Renault 4. The black Muggle girl in the driver's seat smiled nervously.

"Don't worry," he said reassuringly, "everything will be fine. Start the car."

She did so, looking in the rear-view mirror and signalling before pulling out. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"Anywhere," he said. "Just take me for a drive. Wherever you like."

"But I don't……okay," she said, heading for the road leading out of town.

"And when you go for your test tomorrow, you will not turn a corner, change gear, signal, and sound the horn, _all at the same time_, will you?" he asked.

She smiled even more nervously and said "No" in a very small voice.

They had left the town by now, and the broad road had given way to two strips of tarmac.

It was time, Remus thought, to move. His work here was finished; his _real_ work. The driving lessons just about paid for his food and rent, but his purpose in the African republic was to look into the cult of leopard-men operating in the bush outside the town.

Leopard-men, as it turned out, they were not. A bunch of vicious thugs, Muggles all, not a shape-shifter among them, dominating the rural area by terror, extorting food and livestock from peasants who could barely feed themselves. There was nothing here of interest to the wizard world. He would write up his report, detailing the evidence he had uncovered, and send it to the Muggle authorities to act on or not, as they saw fit. Then he would leave, back to the U.K. to await the next assignment.

A lorry was coming towards them. The girl, whose name was Olipa Chama, manoeuvred the Renault so that its nearside wheels ran on the baked earth by the side of the road, with the offside wheels on one strip. The driver of the lorry took his time before doing likewise. So many people did that, with a show of macho bravado. Remus had never had to lecture Olipa about moving to one strip in good time; she did it naturally, as did most of his women pupils. It was usually the men, especially the young ones, who seemed to feel a need to hog both strips, forcing the oncoming vehicle to give way first. Sirius would have been like that. Remus could imagine him, driving determinedly on both strips until the very last minute, confident in his lightning reaction that would have pulled him out of the path of death just in time.

A fond reminiscent smile crossed Remus's face for an instant before the pain kicked in and he clamped down on the thought. This was Africa; Sirius had never come here and never would. Tropical Africa, where the sun set with startling suddenness and was already close to the horizon. Remus imagined the old car breaking down here, halfway between towns; sunset and moonrise; himself having no option but to apparate to his chosen spot in the bush, far from any human village, leaving the young woman alone, to be picked up by the next lorry driver who might be a decent kind man who would give her a lift back to town, or might not, but would at least be a better risk than Remus under the full moon. He shouldn't really have come out today, and wouldn't, had not Olipa pleaded for one last lesson before taking her test.

He looked at his watch. Good, half of Olipa's hour had passed.

"Turn the car round when you consider it is safe to do so, and head back to town," he said.

Olipa drove carefully, giving the right signals and stopping at the stop signs – this town didn't run to traffic lights, although the country's capital did – and drew up outside her boyfriend's draper shop.

"Hallo, John," said Remus.

"Hallo, John," said John. Remus used his middle name when dealing with Muggles. "She ready for her test tomorrow?"

"Going to pass first time," said Remus, "unless she gets nervous. Don't you go making her nervous."

"Not likely! I want her to get that licence, then she can help me here. Take the fabric to my outworkers, bring back the finished garments, save a lot of time. Reminds me, my little brother's getting to driving age. Think you could help him?"

"Afraid not. I won't be around here much longer. Going home."

"Back to England?"

"That's right. So you're okay to get Olipa to the Boma at three tomorrow?"

"Sure. She'll be early."

"But aren't you coming too?" Olipa sounded anxious.

"Sorry, I can't," said Remus. He would not have chosen the day after the full moon for his pupil's driving test, but the examiner only visited this town once a month.

"Oh please, you _must_, I'll fail if you're not there, I know I will. We'll pay you for another lesson, that's all right, isn't it John?"

"No sweat," said John.

"It's not that," Remus began, "I can't……I'm not well……I……"

"But if you're all right today, how can you know you'll be ill tomorrow?" Olipa asked reasonably, her big beautiful eyes begging him.

"I'm not……oh, all right, I'll be here."

The sun had set by the time John and Olipa had gone into the shop, and Remus reckoned he had insufficient time to get to his house. In an alley beside the row of shops, he looked around quickly to ensure he was alone before apparating to his usual place deep in the bush.

Before dawn he apparated back to the hut he rented from the local illicit liquor dealer. No self-inflicted wounds, thanks to the freedom of prowling in the bush, but the pain and exhaustion from the transformation made him grateful to collapse on the bed, binding himself with a very simple spell which even Muggles can do, to ensure that he would wake at two in the afternoon.

He asked himself, as he dressed that afternoon, why on earth he had agreed to this. Why did he seem incapable of saying No? Why was he so anxious to have the good opinion of a girl he would never see again after today? _Why break the habit of a lifetime_, he answered himself sourly.

Something told him to put on his money belt, containing all his savings, under his clothes. That something was neither a voice nor a vision; it was nothing he could define, but it was _something_ and it had saved his life more than once. An image flashed across his mind: a skinny arm at the window. It seemed connected to the _something_, reinforcing it.

Every bone and joint in his body was aching as he waited with John outside the Boma, the office from which all the district's government business was conducted. He shouldn't be out this early, he should have had the whole day to sleep and recover.

The driving examiner came into view, walking back to the Boma.

"She pass, then?" John called cheerily.

"She'll do," said the examiner, a middle-aged white man, grey-haired and burly in khaki shorts and safari jacket. "A touch over-cautious, but that's a fault experience will cure."

Olipa drove up, parked the car and got out, beaming. John hugged her.

"I was scared when he told me I'd passed, and he got out and I was in the car, driving back here _all by myself_," she said.

"Yes, he does that when you've passed," said Remus.

"You could have warned me," she said, laughing.

The three of them went for a celebratory cup of tea at Ben's Café, one of the only two eating places in the smart part of town. The other was Nick's Place. Nick was a plump, bald, very solid Greek who bore no resemblance at all to his namesake whom Remus remembered from happier days. Nick's Place had a liquor licence and a jukebox, and was much frequented by teenagers and by shift workers from the copper mine that was the town's only major industry. It was brash and noisy and had a somewhat sleazy reputation and Olipa liked it, but John and Remus both preferred Ben's, the quiet respectable haunt of housewives taking a rest from shopping, and civil servants on their tea-breaks.

While they were drinking their tea, the town's only fire engine clattered past.

"I'm sorry you're going home," Olipa said.

"I too," said John. "But always remember, you have friends in this town. If ever you come back, look us up."

He gave Remus a present: the equivalent of twenty Galleons in real money. Remus took it gratefully. He had long ago, of necessity, abandoned false pride; John could afford this and wanted to give it.

All Remus wanted to do was get back to his house and lie down. But when he reached the end of his street, a crowd had gathered, and the fire engine stood outside a smoking ruin. The crowd chattered excitedly:

"In broad daylight, imagine!"

"It's one of Shandavu's houses."

"Must be Njovu, teaching him a lesson."

"Was it a petrol bomb?"

"I don't know, but it was a big explosion, whatever it was."

Njovu was a rival shady operator who was rumoured to be resenting Remus's landlord's expansion into his territory of drug- and illegal firearm-dealing. But Remus thought it unlikely that Njovu was guilty on this occasion. The attack was almost certainly aimed at himself, not Shandavu. There were two possibilities: either the self-styled leopard-men had tracked down the nosy white man who had been asking questions around the villages, or…… More probably _or._ When better to attack a werewolf than on the day after the full moon, when he should be at home sleeping off its effect?

Remus slipped away from the edge of the crowd. Those who had ordered the attack would know already that their target had eluded them. His departure from this territory would have to be brought forward to – well, about instantly.

He had his money in his belt, and his wand in the special pocket he had made for it. He needed nothing else. There was in any case nothing salvageable in the wreck of the house. He set his escape plans in motion, his mind already leaping forward to speculate on where he would be sent next.


End file.
